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Reverb 10

Reverb 10 is an annual event and online initiative to reflect on your year and manifest what’s next. Use the end of your year as an opportunity to reflect on what’s happened, and to send out reverberations for the year ahead.

Basically, the site gives you prompts, and you write about them. I kept seeing the hashtag on Twitter and then some of the blogs I read started participating, and because one of my blog resolutions is to update more frequently, and there’s nothing I love more than reflecting, I’m going to jump in too. I’m not crazy about the word “manifest”, but I’ll get over it. I’ve missed the first 4 prompts, so I’m going to squish a few together to catch up.

December 1: One Word. Encapsulate the year 2010 in one word. Explain why you’re choosing that word. Now, imagine it’s one year from today, what would you like the word to be that captures 2011 for you? and December 3 – Moment. Pick one moment during which you felt most alive this year. Describe it in vivid detail (texture, smells, voices, noises, colors).

2010, for me, was nothing less than adventure. I launched my first book and Andrew and I lived in Greece for a few months. I’d never done any of these things before.

There are many moments that made me feel alive this year, more than in an average year, but one of our first weekends in Greece is still so vivid to me. It was in early June, and the weather in Athens wasn’t too hot. That particular weekend, it was actually rainy, and it was nice to see Athens, a city I usually associate with the driest of climates, grey and wet, the sidewalks slippery from being washed clean. We went downtown and visited the Acropolis. We’d both been before, me many times, but it’s not the kind of tourist-y site you get sick of. I don’t, anyway. And the rain had kept many tourists away, so it was emptier than usual up there, and I sat on one of the rocks and looked around while Andrew took pictures. Afterwards, we made our way down and went back home, and by the time we returned we realized we had to leave quickly for our concert that night, Rufus Wainwright in the Lykavittos Theatre. I wrote about the night here, about the feeling of watching the music in an ancient ampitheatre, and then having dinner in a taverna at the base of the hill after midnight.

The point of all of this: I am usually a person who plans a lot, who prefers stability to spontaneity, but so much of this year was about not having those kinds of plans and enjoying it. Not being afraid of it. Walking through quiet darkened streets in Athens, half-lost, assuming that if we walk enough we’ll find a restaurant. Of course we do.

This also plays in to today’s prompt: December 4 – Wonder. How did you cultivate a sense of wonder in your life this year?

It was easy to cultivate a sense of wonder in a foreign country, not just because it’s so different, but because I was actively looking for wonder. Athens is an ugly city, and this summer there were strikes all the time and people were cranky, but I also knew that there were beautiful, amazing parts to it if I looked. And it wasn’t that hard to find them.

For 2011, I would like to maintain that sense of adventure, that search for wonder, but I would like to do it here. Home. It’s not necessary to travel around the world to feel like that, but you do have to work a little harder to not get so bogged down in everydayness. I want to feel the way I felt about 2010 right here in Montreal.

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2 thoughts on “Reverb 10”

I like how you expressed cultivating wonder at home: “It’s not necessary to travel around the world to feel like that, but you do have to work a little harder to not get so bogged down in everydayness.” So true! I’m going to have to remember that because I don’t forsee any travel in my immediate future but I’m really okay with that.